Some of you may have noticed a new feature show up in Weather Defender this week. We are now providing the Full Bulletin Text Summaries of Watches, Warnings, and Advisories right inside the Weather Defender interface.

Bulletin Text is accessible via a new icon that appears over top of Watches, Warnings, or Advisories layers, found in the Winter Weather map (or you can add them to any other map from the Layer Browser). The icon looks like this:

When you move your mouse over the icon, you will get a description of the active bulletin, along with valid start-end times:

Finally, clicking on the icon will bring up the full bulletin summary:

What's in a Bulletin?

Bulletin Summaries are written by NWS forecasters and contain a lot of useful information about the details of a particular watch/warning/advisory. They will tell you:

The synoptic pattern (general weather situation) that is causing a particular hazard

The exact times when weather will be most threatening

Specific locations which are most threatened

In some cases, like flooding or snow-related hazards, the amount of water or snowfall expected